WASHINGTON — The White House touted Iran’s halted executions after President Trump’s ongoing military threats, as Arab and Israeli leaders reportedly urged the US not to launch an attack on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei — just yet.
In response to Trump’s escalating rhetoric, Iranian authorities halted 800 planned executions of protesters, press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a briefing.
“Only President Trump knows what he’s going to do,” Leavitt said Thursday, keeping all options on the table if Iran resumes its brutal crackdown on protesters.
“The president and his team have communicated to the Iranian regime that if the killing continues, there will be grave consequences,” she said.
An anonymous “senior Saudi official” told Agence France-Presse that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman convinced Trump to hold fire for fear of “grave blowbacks in the region.”
An unnamed “senior U.S. official,” meanwhile, told the New York Times that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Trump to postpone plans to allow his country to prepare for likely retaliatory strikes.
Trump’s public projection of restraint was taken seriously by many advocates for an attack — but not literally by all insiders, who recalled a White House statement last June that Trump would decide what to do about Iran’s nuclear program “within the next two weeks.” Two days later, a massive US bombing mission leveled three key nuclear sites.
“I’d be skeptical of this reporting,” Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said of the report citing Netanyahu’s pleas for a pause.
“If Trump wanted to back off, I also would be telling reporters this. It is a convenient spin,” tweeted Dubowitz, whose nonprofit advocates a hardline stance on Iran.
“If it’s only a short term delay, that could make more sense. If I were Bibi, I wouldn’t be lobbying for a strike — or opposing one. I’d give Trump the space to decide on his own.”
Trump warned Jan. 2 that the US was “locked and loaded and ready to go” if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” which it reportedly then did on a historic scale, with the ongoing repression claiming 2,586 lives, most of them protesters, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
On Monday, Trump announced plans for an economic embargo of Iran, with 25% tariffs on any nation that maintains commercial ties.
On Tuesday, Trump called for regime-change revolution, writing on social media: “KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! … Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price… HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
In a public change of tone, Trump on Wednesday asserted Wednesday that “the other side” claimed Iran stopped killing anti-government protesters.
“We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping. It’s stopped. It’s stopping, and there’s no plan for executions,” Trump said in the Oval Office. He declined to say who offered those assurances, aside from “very important sources on the other side.”
Trump’s evolving commentary has generated debate in Washington.
One source close to the White House told The Post that while US regional allies had “a lot of uneasiness about what would come next if they did take out the regime,” it’s possible that the latest administration posture is a deliberate deception to lower Iran’s guard.
Another source close to the administration noted that US military planners would have earnest reasons to believe there aren’t enough US naval assets in place to defend American bases in the Middle East or Israel, but that it’s unclear how real Trump’s pivot is.
The Pentagon is moving a carrier strike group from the South China Sea toward the Middle East, with the Iran regime under pressure from anti-government protesters, News Nation reported. The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its strike group moving to the region could take a week.
“There are military units and naval units that are moving in the direction of the Middle East, and to me that’s an indication … there will be every effort to back up regime change by the people of Iran,” Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) told The Post.
Only a core group of key advisers have been read into Trump’s most spectacular recent uses of military power, including the June strikes on Iran and this month’s raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Although Netanyahu was an active participant in Trump’s pre-nuclear site deception last year, the second source expressed doubt that Saudi officials would be intentionally misleading news outlets as part of a new stratagem.
Leavitt on Thursday described Trump as taking a wait-and-see approach.
“The president and his team have communicated to the Iranian regime that if the killing continues, there will be grave consequences,” she said.
“The president understands today that 800 executions that were scheduled and supposed to take place yesterday were halted. And so the president and his team are closely monitoring this situation, and all options remain on the table.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a decadeslong outspoken advocate of attacking Iran, said Thursday it was “beyond disturbing” to hear a report that Arab nations “intervened on behalf of Iran to avoid decisive military action by President Trump.”
“The ayatollah’s regime has American blood on its hands,” Graham said in an X post. “They are slaughtering people in the streets.”
An Iranian state-run TV channel on Wednesday aired a photograph of Trump surviving the assassination attempt against his life at a July 2024 campaign rally — with a sickening warning, “This time it will not miss the target.”
“If it is accurate that the Arab response is ‘action is not necessary against Iran’ given this current outrageous slaughter of innocent people, then there will be a dramatic rethinking on my part regarding the nature of the alliances now and in the future,” Graham thundered.
The precise death toll among protesters is unclear due to a regime-imposed internet blackout — with Trump saying Tuesday that he had seen five different data sets.
A number of videos have surfaced showing makeshift morgues with dozens of body bags and witnesses have described slaughters in major cities.
Iranian security forces have killed nearly 3,500 anti-regime protesters, according to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group, with other unofficial reports claiming the death toll is almost 10 times that number.
Leavitt’s description of 800 postponed executions was new information, as previously news coverage focused on a single man, Erfan Soltani, 26, whose family said he was due to be hanged on Wednesday.
Local officials said that Soltani was facing charges of acting against Tehran’s national security and spreading propaganda.
Iran’s foreign affairs minister Abbas Araghchi told Fox News Wednesday night there would be “no hanging today or tomorrow,” which Trump responded on his Truth Social was “good news.”
The US has already ordered some personnel at a military base in Qatar to evacuate, according to the Associated Press. Embassies in that nation, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait urged diplomats to also halt travel.
Iran also closed its airspace to all flights for around four hours early Thursday, but later reopened it as the protests appeared to lessen in scope and intensity.
